Greens and Greenery.

I'm sitting in the park at 11 at night, just staring at my computer screen and trying to process everything at once. It's hard work. Trying to figure our this money situation is always a pain, having to decide between saving it and missing out on some stuff or spend too much and get the social and traveling aspects of Japan is a difficult trade-off. I need to work some more on this job hunt, I've signed up for several potentials so we'll see if it pans out soon!

Going on a completely hypocritical tangent, I had a great time this weekend even if it wasn't exactly cheap. Friday was the International Student Association again; I'm really enjoying myself in this club and the people in it are some of the nicest and coolest ones I've met in Japan. I even got to meet a Japanese student who's going to USC in August! So I'm sure he and I will be keeping in touch a lot. We had a lot of things to do in the club including some planning for some parties and events in the summer and some games to get everyone conversing in English or Japanese. Afterwards, as usual, we all went out to eat which is definitely my favorite part, getting everyone out of the classroom setting to where they're more comfortable!

Yesterday was definitely intense. It was Kevin's birthday, so we all decided to have a picnic in a park far from Kandaimae. We bought loads of food and drinks, brought booze, iPods, and soccer balls and generally had an amazing time playing, eating, and talking until it got dark out. Afterwards, I had another birthday dinner to go to, where we went to a really fancy cake restaurant and tried cake that would definitely usually be way too expensive. It was almost classy.

After that I was beat, but of course as soon as I got home, people decided they wanted to go out to Umeda to drink and dance. And of course I went along, not being able to say no to Japanese nightlife if I tried. We made it to Umeda, but our friends we were trying to meet up with were too drunk to tell us where they were, so we wandered downtown for the better part of two hours, but it was still entertaining to see the various stratas mingling. They finally met us and took us to the bar, an Irish pub filled with foreigners. We met some great people and sat around and drank til morning. (The bartender gave us some drinks on the house, which I greatly appreciated, so I didn't really even spend any money for once!)

When we were trying to leave, we got separated in our inebriated state, which meant I was stuck on a train by myself. Apparently I passed out for 3 hours on the train and woke up somewhere near Kyoto. I was totally freaked out but luckily there were no major hiccups and I finally got home and crawled into bed.

This week is another typical Kansai week, with classes to go to, lunches to make, people to talk to, and weekend partying to look forward to. I'm trying to get my Kyoto trip set up again, it rained the whole last part of Golden Week so I had to reschedule and reschedule more. The weather has been amazing these past few days, so hopefully the rain will hold off as things heat up!